Spirium

The last new game I played on holiday was Spirium, in which you place meeples on a card grid and then take them off again, either to obtain money or use/buy one of the cards they are next to. You can also use your meeples to activate cards you have bought. Mines produce crystals called 'spirium', which can then be translated into points by a factory. There are other ways to obtain money, spirium and points, by careful management of meeples, cards and resources. It took me a while to get the hang of how it worked, but then I put together what I thought was a pretty simplistic plan and just went with that for the rest of the game, mostly ignoring opportunities to gain high point buildings or end-game points. And then I won, by quite a large margin! So, I'm not sure if I gained some useful insight that enabled me to maximise my points, or if I was just really lucky because of a card that came up late in the game that helped me a lot. The game took a bit of thought and a lot of planning, but turns were quite easily scuppered by the placement of other players' meeples, which made it a bit frustrating. Some interesting mechanics, and an unexpected victory for me, but not a game I'll be particularly looking to play again.